The controversy over alleged United States surveillance of European Union institutions escalated yesterday, with French president François Hollande leading recriminations against the US, describing the alleged behaviour as unacceptable.

Mr Hollande hinted the negotiations could be under threat. “We can only have negotiations, transactions, in all areas, once we have obtained these guarantees for France, but that goes for the whole European Union and I would say for all partners of the United States,” he said, calling on the US to explain its practices and cease surveillance immediately.

“We cannot accept this kind of behaviour from partners and allies,” he added.

Merkel delivered her severest warning yet on the NSA debacle. “We are no longer in the cold war,” her spokesman, Steffen Seibert, said. “If it is confirmed that diplomatic representations of the European Union and individual European countries have been spied upon, we will clearly say that bugging friends is unacceptable.”

Seibert said Berlin was keen on the trade talks with Washington, but qualified that support: “Mutual trust is necessary in order to come to an agreement.”…

Kerry, the US secretary of state, delivered a low-key response to the growing European clamour for answers, saying the NSA activities were not unusual. “Every country in the world that is engaged in international affairs of national security undertakes lots of activities to protect its national security and all kinds of information contributes to that,” he said. “All I know is that is not unusual for lots of nations.”

A sense of outrage gathered momentum across Europe…

“Washington is shooting itself in the foot,” said Germany’s conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper.

“Declaring the EU offices to be a legitimate attack target is more than the unfriendly act of a machine that knows no bounds and may be out of the control of politics and the courts.”

A front-page editorial in Le Monde charged the Americans with very bad behaviour.

Martin Schulz, the president of the European parliament, likened the NSA to the Soviet-era KGB…Schulz said: “I feel treated as a European and a representative of a European institution like the representative of the enemy. Is this the basis for a constructive relationship on the basis of mutual trust? I think no.”

“It is shocking that the United States take measures against their most important and nearest allies, comparable to measures taken in the past by the KGB, by the secret service of the Soviet Union.”

While the anger is broad and growing across Europe, it is particularly intense in Germany which, according to Snowden’s revelations, is by far the main target within the EU of the NSA’s Prism programme sweeping up metadata en masse, capturing and storing it.

Given the high sensitivity of data-privacy issues in Germany, the scandal could test Merkel and force her on to the offensive against the Americans as she seeks to win a third term in general elections 11 weeks away.

The opposition Social Democrats in Berlin demanded action from Merkel, but left her scope to cut a deal that would allow some snooping and data exchanges. Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the Social Democrats leader in the German parliament, said the chancellor had to insist “the mania for data collection be palpably limited”.

The Germans are also incensed at the British over GCHQ’s Tempora programme which is gathering electronic information from across Europe…

Notice that some in Germany believe that the EU has been stupid in overly trusting the USA. Notice that the Germans are incensed with both the USA and the UK. Many Germans will long remember this and decide that they will always have to mistrust the USA, despite future assurances by the USA.

According to a German source (the following was machine-translated into English from German), the USA will give the Europeans a lot of information:

Obama promises EU all the information

Given the outrage over the U.S. spy in Europe, the U.S. president tried to relax. He also justified for intelligence operations. http://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2013-07/snowden-brief-usa-prozess

I should also add that another German news source basically said that Americans like ‘big brother’ to take care of their security, and hinted that the Americans were hypocritical. This does not bode well for the USA (cf. Isaiah 10:5-6, KJV; Daniel 11:39).

The Germans are very upset about what seems to have happened. The USA has not denied the allegations, so presumably there is some truth in them.

And the solution?

Give the Europeans all the information that they want about this, plus assurances that the USA will not continue spying on them, plus share other information.

The ramifications of this are staggering.

If the USA provides the Europeans with all the information that apparently it has agreed to and if the USA ceases (or dramatically reduces) the amount of surveillance against the Europeans in general, and the Germans in particular, this will put the Europeans in a position where they clearly can take steps to takeover the USA and not be found out until it is too late.

This matter is that serious.

Yet, because the media in general does not understand biblical prophecy, it mainly seems to think that only a trade agreement could be affected by all this. This is much more serious than that.

I have long warned that I believed that the USA would share too much of its military information with the Europeans and now it appears that it will increase doing that. If this scandal also results in the USA truly diminishing its espionage against Germany and the Europeans, this too will greatly impact the security of the USA. Yet few Americans consider that any real threat will come from Germany and Europe. But according to biblical prophecy the final Beast power (Revelation 13; Daniel 11) will arise in Europe who will know “hidden things” (Daniel 8:23, YLT), and this will result in the takeover of the USA and its Anglo-descended allies (cf. Daniel 11:39). The Germans are upset and will use this crisis as part of their basis for taking steps that the USA will regret.